1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus for transmitting various information necessary for maintenance and control of electronic apparatus, such as facsimile apparatus and copier installed in office, through general public circuits networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
The facsimile apparatus is recently increasing in the type capable of forming images on plain paper by employing a copying process. The rate of troubles occurring in the mechanism employing such copying process is high. It is desired to strengthen the service organization for maintenance and control due to the necessity of periodic overhaul for maintenance of performance, and in particular quick and accurate countermeasures are keenly demanded in order to recover from troubles promptly.
In the conventional method of maintenance and control, generally, the facsimile apparatus itself detects its own condition, and indicates the nature of trouble or coming of replacement timing of specific parts by its display or the like, or displays the nearly empty state of consumable parts (indicating the consumable parts are about to end) to tell the user. The user recognizes the state, and if judging it necessary to call serviceman, it is reported to the maintenance service station assigned for maintenance and control of the facsimile apparatus by telephone or other means.
Such telephone communication, however, gives rise to the following problems.
(1) The user cannot do his own work when explaining the trouble, and loses time. PA0 (2) The user may misunderstand the trouble message, and wrong information may be transmitted to the maintenance service station. PA0 (3) The user may not notice the trouble message, and in such a case a minor trouble may be promoted to a major trouble. PA0 (4) The maintenance service station sends the serviceman by preparing necessary repair parts after receiving the report from the user, and prompt countermeasure is difficult.
It is hence lately proposed to do maintenance and control in a method in which the user side facsimile detects its own operating state, converts the detected data to communication information, sends it automatically (or according to a transmission request from the maintenance service station) to a maintenance service station. The station receives the transmitted communication information, converts it, for example, into character information and prints out to recognize the operating state of the user side facsimile. (See, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Hei. 1-302749).
When executing such method of maintenance and control, in the first place, the user must install the facsimile apparatus possessing such function for transmitting the operating state. Then the serviceman goes to the office of the user to agree to a contract, and negotiates the term of the maintenance control for the facsimile apparatus with the user. Upon agreement, the serviceman manually sets the opening information for activating the function on the facsimile apparatus having the function of automatic transmission of the operating state.
The opening information includes what maintenance function should be selected, that is, what type of information is to be sent to the maintenance service station, information about the subscribed facsimile apparatus such as the apparatus name, subscriber's name and number, and the telephone number of the maintenance service station, that is, the information transmission destination.
In this facsimile apparatus, only the information about the operating state of the apparatus detected according to the function selected and set by the opening information is automatically transmitted to the maintenance service station. Accordingly, in the event of a trouble failing to transmit automatically to the maintenance service station, or a trouble out of the scope of the maintenance control service, the user must report to the maintenance service station by telephone or other means, and hence the same problems as mentioned above may occur.